Deer Cloud
Susan Deer Cloud
FOX MOUNTAIN
China has Han Shan
We know him as Cold Mountain
Writing poems on bark
I write on Catskill boulders
Let me give you Fox Mountain
From the book:
When She Was a Little Girl
When she was a little girl she never cried.
Old black-and-white photographs show
a thick-mouthed child with intense eyes,
no smile, face too serious for its age,
straight hair permed into fork-tongued
curls. When she was a woman
sometimes she held the girl's face in her hands,
grieved for the child who believed Indians
didn't cry … "part Indian" girl
who studied the wooden Indians
of matinees, only movies she, her brothers
and many boy cousins could afford,
a mere quarter. Back in those days
for a cheap price an Indian girl could learn
from the big screen how to petrify her face
in defeat … smiles vanishing forever.
She could even eat popcorn and penny candies
while she vanished, too.
Dances with Snow, Fox Mountain
Friends, little did I know the November night
you invited me to Fox Mountain to celebrate
my October birthday would be the first snowfall
of that year. The food was good as ever,
the wine and other drink flowed like the rivers
before deepest winter freezes them,
and my face still glows from the many candles
lit to honor my ageing. But best of all
was when we spilled out laughing
onto the icy deck, snow crystals
twinkling in the porch light and we slipping
and sliding around like silly kids.
And I don't know how this happened
but I decided to kick off my shoes
and start dancing barefooted there
in the high mountain night …
fox-trotting with snow like stars drifting
down then rising up whitely to meet
our sparkling bodies, and me thinking
this must be it, this must be eternity,
while one of you snapped my picture
so I could show the entire world
how simple being born is …
Susan Deer Cloud is a mixed lineage mountain Indian from the Catskills. An alumna of Binghamton University (B.A. & M.A.) and Goddard College (MFA), she is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, two New York State Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and a Chenango County Council for the Arts Individual Artist Grant. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies; her most recent books are Braiding Starlight, The Last Ceremony & Car Stealer.
She likes to eat blueberries in winter and sing to feral cats.
You can write to her at susan.poetrymatters@gmail.com or visit her website at sites.google.com/site/susandeercloud/
FOX MOUNTAIN is a 80 page hand-stitched paper book with spine. $16.00
TO ORDER ON-LINE
From the US
From Canada
From Other Countries
***********************************************************
CAR STEALER
Susan Deer Cloud
Car Stealer
My mother told me to stay away from you,
the boy who stole cars. In our town
everyone called you Car Stealer.
Half century later I still don't know
your first name. Last name, yes ~
Mohawk name a well known chief holds.
But for me, Car Stealer, it will always be
your name alone. It will be that boy
of twelve, fourteen, sixteen burning
rubber down School Street where I
watched from white pine I used to
climb. “Hey, Sexy Susie,” you laughed
through one of many rolled down windows,
“come on, Babe, go for a ride with me!”
I gazed down, hugging the pine
the way maybe you ached for me
to embrace you, but what did I know?
The silky pine needles teased
my face trying not to smile when
you blew me crazy kisses, roared
between my parents' house
and brick school we both hated.
Car Stealer, did you suspect
I thought you beautiful ~ skin
color of Catskill clay, hair black
as manes of wild horses I cried for?
Hair streaming past defiant shoulders
before the white boys made long hair
a fashion statement! My mother
warned me, so I never learned the deeps
of your flesh, scent, touch except rough
bark, sap, sun-heated needles tattooing
your thefts into my virgin skin.
Car Stealer, one day you stopped
speeding down our narrow street.
My mother claimed they locked you
in a place for juvenile delinquents.
I stole out to the road, believing
she lied, waiting to hear “Sexy Susie”
sparkling like chrome off your tongue,
ready to hitch a ride in a red convertible,
top down, our entangled hair
tearless trails in the wind.
Car Stealer is a 40 page hand-stitched chapbook - $10.00
TO ORDER ON-LINE
From the US
From Canada
From Other Countries
**********************************************************
The Last Ceremony
From the book:
THE ONLY CEREMONY WE HAD LEFT TO US
(for Lance Henson, Ron Welburn
& Sara Littlecrow-Russell)
I am not going to pretend. The only ceremony
we had left to us was taking rides in a dented
Chevy on dirt roads no city slickers could find.
The only ceremony left to us was stopping
at a path we mountain Indians knew about,
stepping behind one another, hands brushing
the bent ferns. The ceremony never stolen
was walking a stony trail to a cliff, where
we made our stand with oaks, spruces, maples,
a few surviving hemlocks. I am not going to lie.
We still had a family, in some ways a tribe.
But our prayer was staring across valleys
at Catskill peaks answering us
with blue.
My brothers, once I dreamed
of Cheyenne stallions and Cherokee fire.
My sister, once I cried for Chippewa bear medicine
when they cut my tongue. Can I pretend otherwise?
The last ceremony left to me is riding
the broken horses of love off cliffs.
CONTENTS
Marlon Brando Dies at 80
Half-Breed at Ten Years Old, the Great Depression
Her Pocahontas
Suzy Doll
Welcome to the Land of Ma'am
You Really Have
Old Man
Wonder Bread
Harvest
Tear
First Time
Your America, My Turtle Island
WHIM
Sexiest Tribe in America
Fear
Before Christmas That Year
Catskill
Tweed
Shadow Dream
Winter's End White Dream
Riding with Gold
Driving Home Tonight
Bering Strait Binary Star
The Last Words
White Dress
Raven Goes to College
Passing
When I am a Tree
I Wish I Had Written This Poetry
The Dirt in the Gallery Across from the Old Whorehouse
Bear
Whale Watch
Pemaquid
Holocaust Museum
Vincent Van Gogh Writes to Jeanne Louise Calment
Yellow Girl, I Give You
Fear of Bag Ladies
Canvas
When My Oldest Brother Turns
Buffalo Nickel Makes Return
Why I Love Being an Indian
After Reading Your Snow Poems
Encampment
Moon Seeing
One Good Indian Man
Bear Medicine
Rock Hard
Rock `n Roll Ravens
Burial
The Only Ceremony We Had Left To Us
The Last Ceremony
is an 88 page hand-sewn paper book with spine - $16.00
TO ORDER ON-LINE
